Animals account for almost 20 percent of the world's food consumption, and animal-based food products are a major source of revenue throughout the world. In the United States alone, beef production is the fourth largest manufacturing industry and accounts for nearly 25 percent of the farm sector cash receipts and seven percent of supermarket sales each year. Feeding costs account for most of the total variable costs in beef production,
Significant improvements in animal performance, efficiency and carcass and meat quality have been made over the years through the application of standard animal breeding and selection techniques. However, such classical animal breeding techniques require several years of genetic evaluation of performance records on individual animals and their relatives and are therefore very expensive. Other efforts have been made to improve productivity and quality through the application of such management practices as the use of feed additives, animal hormonal implants and chemotherapeutics. However, there is significant political and regulatory resistance to the introduction and use of such methodologies. Such methodologies are also non-inheritable and need to be applied differently in every production system.
There is a need for methods that allow relatively easy and more efficient selection and breeding of farm animals that have an advantage for an inheritable trait of enhanced feed intake and feed efficiency. The economic significance of the use of genetic markers that are associated with specific economically important traits (especially traits with low heritability) in livestock through marker-assisted selection cannot therefore be over-emphasized.
The physiological regulation of intake, growth and energy partitioning in animals is under the control of multiple genes, which may be important candidates for unraveling the genetic variation in economically relevant traits (ERT) in beef production. Polymorphisms in these candidate genes that show association with specific ERT are useful quantitative trait nucleotides for marker-assisted selection and management. Haplotypes that consist of a series of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a segment of DNA that are inherited together can also be used to evaluate such associations.
Polymorphisms in candidate genes that show association with specific ERT may be useful quantitative trait nucleotides for marker-assisted selection. It remains advantageous to provide further SNPs, so that a more accurate prediction can be made of the feed intake and feed efficiency phenotypes of an animal, and also enable a business method that provides for increased residual feed intake in livestock cattle, as well as providing access to various records of the animals and allows comparisons with expected or desired goals with regard to the quality and quantity of animals produced.
Citation or identification of any document in this application is not an admission that such document is available as prior art to the present invention.